Kitchen sync

Aikens started out at City College Norwich in 1986. His first job was at Cavaliers in Battersea in 1990, where he stayed for a year. From there, he joined Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire. During his tenure, it was awarded a third Michelin star. He then had a brief stint with Philip Britten at The Capital Hotel, before one year with Richard Neat at Pied à Terre . To further his education, he moved to Paris and Joël Robuchon, before returning to Pied à Terre in 1996 as head chef, maintaining the restaurant’s two stars. In 2000 he worked as a private chef for Andrew Lloyd Webber, Anouska Hempel and helped launch Daylesford Organic. He launched Tom Aikens in 2003 and Tom’s Kitchen in 2006. In 2014 he opened The Pawn, then The Fat Pig, both in Hong Kong. Pots, Pans & Boards in Dubai followed in 2015. In March this year, he relaunched Tom’s Kitchen in Chelsea.

Tom Aikens has eyes that say he’s seen it all before. He isn’t like the modern breed of chefs. He doesn’t court the limelight. He’s relaxed. He speaks at a decibel level audible only to dogs. His Instagram feed features more family than food. He’s from a different generation.

When Aikens grew up in Eighties Norfolk, cheffing wasn’t cool. Keith Floyd and Delia were the prime-time TV cooks and cookery book launches were around 10 per cent of what they are today. British food was suffering from malaise and being attacked with a level of malevolence from the continent that is hard to fathom considering the quality we have today. Cooking was a calling for kids who spurned the mainstream, wanted something practical and embraced hard graft. Aikens fitted the bill.

‘I had no problem with 20-hour days,’ he says with a glint that suggests he’d do it all again. ‘I’m sure that every head chef I worked under would agree that I was a grafter.’ Aikens, though, had a head start. It’s no coincidence that both he and identical twin brother Rob are at the zenith of cookery, albeit on opposite sides of the Atlantic. After four years at Le Gavroche, Rob moved to the States and made a name for himself in New York, before opening his own place this year. ‘We were lucky to grow up where we did,’ says Tom. ‘Mum was behind our drive into cooking. She was focused on family food and gave importance to meal times. We had a huge garden and grew produce from scratch. She taught us about the seasons and gave us a bit of the garden to tend. It kept us out of trouble.’

But trouble seemed to follow the Aikens twins around. The brothers were ‘a handful’ at school and they count setting a sofa on fire and throwing vegetables at cars among their minor misdemeanours, but the kitchen provided focus from an early age. ‘We wouldn’t be making anything fancy – apple crumble or a shepherd’s pie – but I can still remember the concentration. I just loved it.’

The boys were subjected to a pincer movement of gastronomic influence. While his mother made hearty British food at home, their father travelled the world as a wine merchant. Family holidays meant research trips across France visiting suppliers and eating authentic local food. ‘I remember the first time we experienced nouvelle cuisine,’ Aikens recounts. ‘It was the most beautiful tomato salad with a fragrant olive oil, basil, shallots, sea salt, pepper and chives; I remember it like yesterday. I was mesmerised by the simple presentation.’

From that moment, the kitchen was calling. He enrolled at college and embarked on the career that would take him to some of the world’s best kitchens.

BAPTISM BY FIRE

When Aikens qualified, the world was small for chefs. International placements and job-swaps were uncommon. The training ground for a British cook meant unpaid experience in basement kitchens. Sweary, sweaty environments where violence was rife and fuses short. His first post, at Cavaliers in Battersea, introduced him to the mercurial David Cavalier. Cavalier – a chef as renowned for his temper as he was for his immaculate food – took an immediate liking to Aikens and offered him a job.

It’s here his career began to gather pace. Cavalier introduced Aikens to Pierre Koffmann and his restaurant La Tante Claire. The team he joined is a roll call of today’s top chefs. Tom Kitchin (The Kitchin), Eric Chavot (Coda) and Helena Puolakka (Aster) made up the fledging brigade, and it’s no coincidence that the restaurant won its third Michelin star during Aikens’ tenure. ‘I could have stayed, but I wanted to progress,’ he says with minimal emotion.

He moved to the kitchen that was to define his stardom. Progress came in the form of Richard Neat at Pied à Terre. ‘It was known for being one of the hardest kitchens in London and the turnover of staff was high,’ says Aikens. ‘There were no “hellos” or “good mornings”.’ It suited him down to the ground. He knuckled down and didn’t realise the extent he impressed until Neat offered him the chance to go to Paris and work with Joël Robuchon. Considered by many as the best restaurant in the world at the time, it was an opportunity of epic proportion.

‘Paris was the most brilliant and also hardest time of my life. I was sleeping three hours a night, which is insufficient,’ he says with a hint of a grin. ‘I’d get pounding headaches from the lack of sleep. By Thursday, I was fucked, if you’ll pardon my French. I was running on adrenaline and packets of aspirin. I didn’t have much cash, so of a weekend I just walked – I know Paris better than most Parisians.’

TO BURNOUT AND BACK

It’s impossible to talk about Aikens’ without mentioning ‘youngest chef to achieve two Michelin stars’ in the same breath. Aged just 26 he was given the opportunity to take over from Neat back at two-star Pied à Terre in London. Was he out of his depth? ‘Sure, I was young and punching above my weight, but that’s how it was. I’d worked there before, so I knew the set-up. I knew the positives and the negatives; the kitchen was cramped, dark and not very nice.’

In a carefully choreographed move, he took the reins in October 1995. ‘Our game plan was to have a 12-month run at keeping the two stars. We knew the Michelin visits were coming and when the guide came out, I kept the stars.’ Aikens’ deadpan delivery doesn’t do this achievement justice. It’s unprecedented. Even the superb 26-year-old Niall Keating, who this year won Michelin’s Young Chef award, couldn’t manage it at Whatley Manor, where it was downgraded to one star.

After such a prodigious start, you could argue that there was only one way Aikens’ career could turn. The long hours, youth and his temper got the better of him and in 1999 he left Pied à Terre under a cloud after allegedly burning a chef with a hot knife. Cue a reality check.

He took a break from London and spent three years working as a private chef to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Anouska Hempel, time which gave him the space to think.

The second stage of his career has been kind to Aikens. His first eponymous restaurant on Chelsea’s Elystan Street won a star and five AA Rosettes and after 11 successful years, he brought the curtain down. ‘What people are prepared to pay for food in London is funny. If you look at members’ clubs like Annabel’s, people will pay ridiculous money for OK food, yet baulk at paying prices elsewhere,’ he says. ‘We’ve probably got too many restaurants at the moment, but the diversity is incredible. It’s the best city in the world for food.’ Aikens should know. He’s opened two restaurants in Hong Kong and one in Dubai to huge success.

Sitting in Tom’s Kitchen, his modishly remodelled restaurant, Aikens is in contemplative mood as I ask him about the toughest part of his career. ‘It’s all the training, to be honest. It’s hard to describe the amount of effort that goes in. But life is tough and no one ever said it was going to be easy. Things don’t always go as they should. We all make mistakes, but the trick is not making the same mistake again.’ Earnest, hard-working and true to himself, Aikens set the prototype that modern chefs would do well to follow.